A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…

Spectacles Offer Brands an Advertising Opportunity Combining AR and Location (AdExchanger)
Vincent Cacace: As the ad tech industry catches up to Snap, there will be exciting ways to also dynamically, and perhaps programmatically, insert subtle native ads that have contextual relevance to the augmented world in front of Spectacles-sporting users on their mobile devices, and later in true AR hardware. eMarketer: Snapchat Revs Up Social Commerce Efforts with New Ad Features

How Retailers Running Beacon Campaigns Fared This Holiday Season (Street Fight)
As large retail chains start unpacking the effectiveness of their digital marketing efforts, mobile presence management vendor Swirl is releasing the results of its own beacon marketing campaigns run during the holiday shopping season.

Indoor Location Tech Predicted to Gain Widespread Usage in Coming Years (MediaPost)
At least a quarter of all human and machine uses of precision digital navigation will include an indoor leg or be for an entirely indoor journey by 2022, says Deloitte. This compares to less than 5% of all uses this year. The challenge will be blending all the location data sets together into one, coherent stream, resulting in higher consumer value.

Brand Battle: Jewelers Look to Local Marketing for Diamonds in the Rough (Street Fight)
Sponsored Content: While some shoppers went online to buy gems this holiday season, many went to their local jewelry stores. Winning brands this holiday season had their store location information readily available. But there’s more to reaching the local customer

Case Study: Amazon Didn’t Kill Macy’s. Macy’s Did (Recode)
Jason Del Rey: While Amazon has certainly had a hand in Macy’s struggles, Macy’s should look within, first, for the cause of its current predicament. Because if not Amazon, someone else would have come along and taken advantage of the complacency that’s been on display inside Macy’s over the last decade.

Who Should Rate Communities: Experts, the Public — or Both? (Street Fight)
Tom Grubisich: One emerging group that might be able to help publishers answers tough questions is the nonprofit group STAR Communities, which “works to evaluate, improve, and certify sustainable communities.” The company helps cities and counties “achieve a healthy environment, a strong economy, and well being for their residents.”

These Smart Retail Shelves Tell Brands All About Who’s Looking at Their Products (AdWeek)
Tech vendor Cloverleaf is launching artificial intelligence-powered digital signs that slide over retailers’ shelves to give marketers insights about who is standing in front of their store displays. Procter & Gamble has tested the technology—dubbed shelfPoint—and Dell is currently using it in a Micro Center store in Houston, Texas.

Journalism Trends for 2017 Center on Digital Changes (Nieman Lab)
The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s annual predictions report, released Wednesday, starts out a little bleak and doesn’t exactly let up: In 2017, “key developments will center on fears about how changing technology is affecting the quality of information and the state of our democracy.”

Holidays Are Over, But Retailers Keep Flooding Inboxes (eMarketer)
The only big issue is most of these emails looked to be unread. With the exception of Amazon, which saw the highest percentage, or 33%, of its emails read, the other seven retailers had less luck: only between 12% and 17% of their emails in the week after Christmas were read, according to eDataSource.

Turner Wants to Make More Social Videos for Brands (Digiday)
Turner says it knows how to create videos that people actually want to watch on Facebook (and other platforms), and it plans to double its resources in 2017 to make it happen.

Joe Zappa is the Managing Editor of Street Fight. He joined Street Fight as a contributing writer in 2015, has compiled the daily newsletter since 2016, and has spearheaded the newsroom's editorial operations since 2018. Follow him on Twitter @joe_zappa, and shoot him an email at jzappa@streetfightmag.com.